Tada Theatre

Miranda from Stormville asks: how do we escape circumstances we can’t avoid? How do we continue on when hope is lost? Just miles outside New York City, Miranda’s rural America may as well be a stranded island: is she destined to only experience life through the books she constantly devours? Or does her ailing father, with his self-professed powers, and a caretaker with a flair for the dramatic have bigger plans in store?

The cast features Anna Cain, Brendan Cataldo, James A Pierce III, Mackenzie Menter, Gabe Templin and Richard Wayne.

Produced by Random Access Theatre - Part of IRT’s 3B Development Series

is accepting writer submissions for

How to Write a Musical That Works

Part 1: The World and the Want 

Submissions due November 26, 2018

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) presents How to Write a Musical That Works, part 1: The World and The Want, the first workshop in a 3-part series. One of the programs in TRU Beginnings: Opportunities for Early Development of New Work, it will take place on Sunday, December 9, 2018. For more information, please visit https://truonline.org/events/2018-the-world-and-the-want/. Submission fee is $10 for TRU members, $20 for non-members. Submission deadline is Monday, November 26, 2018. 

This workshop is dedicated to fostering a conversation about musical theater structure not only for writers but also for producers, directors and everyone involved in the creation and production of new works. Each workshop will accept up to 10 writing teams and/or producers who will share works in progress and get feedback from a panel of expert evaluators.

The professional panel of commercial producers, directors and writers will include:

• Cheryl Davis, Kleban and Larsen Award winning librettist and lyricist (Barnstormer), Audelco Award winning playwright (Maid's Door);

• Nancy Golladay, literary consultant (NY Shakespeare Festival, O'Neill Conference, more), moderator of the BMI Librettists' Workshop; 

• Skip Kennon, composer/lyricist (Herringbone, Don Juan DeMarco, Time and Again), former artistic coordinator of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and teacher for two decades;

• Jim Kierstead (Pretty Woman, American Son, Ain't Too Proud, Kinky Boots, Pippin, Waitress);

• Jim Morgan, artistic director of the York Theatre Company;

• Bob Ost, executive director of Theater Resources Unlimited, and TRU Literary Manager Cate Cammarata will facilitate.

**If accepted for presentation, in addition to the submission fee there will be a participation fee of $80 ($75 for TRU members), which includes two seats for the entire day workshop as well as a 20 minute presentation-plus-feedback slot. Space is limited. Any additional attendees from the musical team (including music director, additional collaborators and cast members) who wish to observe the entire workshop must reserve in advance and will be charged $25 per person. 

Audience members will also have a chance to offer their observations, participate in discussions and network sessions and enjoy refreshments. The cost for non-participants to attend for the full day, to observe the presentations and be part of the discussions, is $55 ($35 for TRU members).

Submit up to the first 20 pages of your script in which you introduce the world of your show, and the main characters and their wants - plus MP3s of the songs within only those pages. We will focus on two main aspects: 1) the opening number (or any number that invites the audience into the world of the show); and 2) the songs and scenes in which you introduce your characters. We will discuss "I want" songs, "I am" songs and "I feel" songs, and the function of each, with special attention to the way they move the action.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

The feedback we received was truly invaluable and we are so very thankful to everyone on the panel who took the time to offer their expertise and insights. Our experience with TRU continues to be amazing and we thank you all so much. ~Tony LePage and Josh Sassanella

I LOVED working with TRU. Thanks to you and all the other panelists for your very helpful feedback in the fall, our show is in much better shape.  ~Larry Little, writer 

The experience was VERY useful to me on a creative level.  ~Liz Schiller, writer

I really appreciate your work at organizing and running this event. I learned a lot and really enjoyed the experience.  ~Louise Epperson, writer

Panelists & Facilitator

CATE CAMMARATA is a producer, director, freelance dramaturg and writer in NYC and is the Associate Artistic Director for Rhymes Over Beats Hip Hop Theater Collective. Cate has produced The Assignment off-Broadway and My Father's Daughter with Ursula Rucker at LaMaMa for Rhymes Over Beats. Regionally she produced My Life Is a Musical at Bay Street Theater and has directed many readings of new work in NYC. She is the Literary Manager for Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) and holds a BFA in Acting/Directing from Syracuse University and an MFA in Dramaturgy at SUNY Stony Brook, where she teaches Theatre Arts. Her latest book, "Contemporary Monologues for a New Theater," has just been published by Applause Books. catecammarata.com

CHERYL DAVIS received the Kleban Award as a librettist for her musical Barnstormer, (written with Douglas J. Cohen) about Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman flyer. The show received a Jonathan Larson Award through the Lark Play Development Center. Her play Maid's Door received great reviews, won seven Audelco Awards, and was a finalist for the Francesca Primus Prize. Her play The Color of Justice (commissioned by Theatreworks/USA), received excellent reviews in the New York Times and Daily News, and tours regularly. Her musical Bridges, which was commissioned by the Berkeley Playhouse, received its world premiere in February 2016 to great reviews and three award nominations from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. She received a Writers' Guild Award for her work on "As the World Turns", and was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Her work has been read and performed internationally, including at the Cleveland Play House, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Kennedy Center.  She is the General Counsel of the Authors Guild.

NANCY GOLLADAY has served as a literary consultant with the New York Shakespeare Festival, Paul Sills, the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Ellis Rabb, Warner Brothers Films, Punch Productions, the Nederlander Organization, Tenterfield Productions, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and Davenport Theatrical. Nancy was actively involved in the founding of the U.K.'s Book, Music, and Lyrics (BML) Workshop, an evolving group focused on the development of musical theatre writers and choreographers. She was an invited speaker at Mercury Musical Developments writers' conference in London, and appeared on the original Dramatists Guild "Art of the Synopsis" panel in New York. Nancy has worked for many years on the Drama League, Drama Desk, and Tony-honored BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop as a member of the faculty and Advisory Committee. As Moderator of the Librettists Workshop, she has recently created a popular program of in-house table readings of its members' new projects.

SKIP KENNON was the overall Artistic Coordinator of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and the teacher of the first year there for two decades. He wrote the music for the one-man musical Herringbone (Playwrights Horizons - starring David Rounds, Hartford Stage - starring Joel Grey, Edinburgh Festival, Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater, Chicago's St. Nicholas Theater, 2007 season opener at Williamstown Theater Festival - starring B.D. Wong), the music for Here's Our Girl (workshopped at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater), and the music and lyrics for the musical version of The Last Starfighter (Storm Theatre, Village Theatre Festival of New Musicals - summer 2006, New York Musical Theatre Festival readings - fall 2006), Blanco (Goodspeed Opera House at Chester, National Alliance for Musical Theatre, National Music Theater Network), Feathertop (WPA Theater, Pennsylvania Stage Co.), and Time and Again (Manhattan Theatre Club, San Diego's Old Globe Theater, Eugene O'Neill Center National Music Theater Conference). Kennon also wrote the music and lyrics for the one-act musical Plaisir d'Amour (book by Terrence McNally), which was produced at New York's Triangle Theater and seen in workshop at Circle Rep, as well as the music for the one-act musical Afternoon Tea (book & lyrics by Eduardo Machado), which was performed at Theater Row Theaters in 2005 by Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. He was a classical music critic at the Hollywood Reporter for five years.

JIM KIERSTEAD is a two-time 2013 Tony® Award-winning producer of the Broadway, touring, Toronto, and London productions of Kinky Boots and the revival of Pippin.  He also was involved with the international hit musical Matilda on Broadway and on tour and is a co-producer of the 2016 Broadway musicals Waitress and Natasha & Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 starring Josh Groban.  He has been a co-producer of the Broadway productions of The Visit (Tony nominated), You Can't Take It With You (Tony nominated), Side Show, It Shoulda Been You and Rocky.  Jim has worked in New York theatre since 2000 investing and raising money for shows including Something Rotten, The Glass Menagerie, the revival of Hair (Best Revival), American Idiot, The Addams Family, Catch Me If You Can, among others. Jim began his career by developing and producing the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway premiere of Thrill Me - The Leopold & Loeb Story (nominated for Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical in 2005) and produced its original New York production in 2003.  He founded his production company Kierstead Productions, Inc. in 2004.  In 2010, he produced the Off-Broadway premiere of Yank! - A World War II Love Story.  Jim has been an Executive Producer on the films  Between Love and Goodbye, Kiss Me, Kill Me, and the upcoming Wakefield starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner. Currently, Jim is developing a new musical entitled Unexpected Joy with book & lyrics by Bill Russell (two-time Tony® nominated for Side Show), a play entitled Cover by Bill McMahon, and was involved in the development of The Dodgers by Diana Amsterdam about the draft dodgers during the Vietnam War which had its World Premiere production at The Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles.  Jim is on the Board of Directors of The York Theatre Company and The New York Theatre Barn.

BOB OST

While still a senior, his one-act Beast was produced by Bob Moss in the first season of Playwrights Horizons. He went on to write book, music and lyrics for the off-Broadway revue Everybody's Gettin' into the Act at the Actor's Playhouse, and Finale!, Grand Prize winner in the 1990 American Musical Theater Festival Competition (presented at NAMT) and the 1992 New American Musical Writers Competition, and a finalist at the O'Neill Music Conference in 1989. More recently his musical Angel in My Heart won Best Musical in the 2014 Fresh Fruit Festival. He won the 2011 New Works of Merit Playwriting Competition for his play Breeders, previously a finalist at the O'Neill, as well as a selection of the TRU Voices New Plays Reading Series. The Necessary Disposal was a 2010 finalist in the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo. While producing his own musical revues at cabarets around Manhattan he discovered he could combine his artistic talent with the business skills he was picking up in the advertising world. The idea of Theater Resources Unlimited was born, with the help of co-founders (and  fellow writers) Gary Hughes and Cheryl Davis in 1992. He has gone on to produce musicals Civil War Voices and Rip in the Midtown International Theater Festival, and last year's classic Chinese musical, Romance of the Western Chamber.

Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU) is the leading network for developing theater professionals, a twenty-six year old 501c3 nonprofit organization created to help producers produce, emerging theater companies to emerge healthily and all theater professionals to understand and navigate the business of the arts. Membership includes self-producing artists as well as career producers and theater companies.

TRU publishes an email community newsletter of services, goods and productions; presents the TRU VOICES Annual New Play Reading Series and Annual New Musicals Reading Series, two new works series in which TRU underwrites developmental readings to nurture new shows as well as new producers for theater; offers a Producer Development & Mentorship Program taught by prominent producers and general managers in New York theater, and also presents Producer Boot Camp workshops to help aspirants develop business skills. TRU serves writers through a Writer-Producer Speed Date, a Practical Playwriting Workshop, How to Write a Musical That Works and a Director-Writer Communications Lab; programs for actors include the Annual Combined Audition.

Programs of Theater Resources Unlimited are supported in part by public funds awarded through the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, as well as the Montage Foundation and the Leibowitz Greenway Foundation. 

For more information about TRU membership and programs, visit www.truonline.org.

 Ivy Theatre Company was founded by Audrey Alford, Katie Braden, and Gwenevere Sisco.  We are dedicated to dynamic storytelling that explores the human condition in a visceral way in order to provoke thought and challenge both the artist and the audience.  Our work climbs inside, up and over the walls that have confined and silenced the voices of the few and the oppressed.  

Emma Berry directs a cast of eight, including Jed Dickson* (Off B'way: The Mask), Nancy Hess* (B'way: Phantom, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Goodbye Girl), Rodrigo Lopresti, Simon MacLean*, Marie Marshall*, John Mateyko), Nancy Nagrant*, and Kyla Schoer*.  *Appearing Courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.  AEA Approved Showcase.

Untying Love can be viewed as a contrasting but complementary piece to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit by Margaret Edson, with whom Willens attended high school in Washington, DC. While Wit portrays the experience of a woman, Dr. Vivian Bearing, in the last stages of ovarian cancer, in Untying Love the dying patient remains offstage. And while Witis highly literary, including flashbacks to Dr. Bearing's erudite lectures on the poetry of John Donne, the characters in Willens' play struggle to communicate their most basic hopes, fears and resentments.  But the two plays share two themes: that there are times when medical intervention can no longer help, and that there is something in the human experience that cannot be understood through intellect alone.

Untying Love is presented in a time when end-of-life issues, palliative care and hospice care are receiving increased attention.  Current political debates about Medicare spending touch on the topic both obliquely ‒ about 25% of Medicare dollars are spent during the last year of a person’s life^[1]‒ and directly, as when the term “death panels” was coined for a proposal to offer Medicare patients voluntary counseling about living wills and end-of-life care options.  The provision was deleted from the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Eighty percent of U.S. patients state that they don’t want aggressive intervention and hospitalization once their disease reaches a terminal phase,^[2] and yet many people who want to die at home or in hospice do not have that opportunity.  

The palliative care and hospice communities work to help families acknowledge what’s happening during the dying process while easing patients’ physical and emotional pain.  The hospice philosophy is to help people live with dignity in their last days and weeks, with a chance to say their goodbyes and to die in peace.  There is, in short, such a thing as a good death.

A semi-autobiographical concept by Joanna and Ryan Greer, their combined meta-persona is played by Brad Landers, the self-producing Director/Choreographer assigned to the task.  On deadline, with budgetary constraints, faced with the technical and personal challenges of hoping to make something happen, he strays from his own typical thematic through-line and finds himself having the idea in the most vulnerable way—in front of the audience. 

The script is nonlinear, stage directions, lighting cues, rehearsal, as it deconstructs and evolves in real time on the Ensemble, Caren Chianese, Felix Hess, Eva Kosmos and Bianca Saltaformaggio, the Stage Manager, Kyle Leacock, and Lighting Designer, Steve O’Shea.  Embracing the handed down art form, dances steal from the pedestrian grace of vaudeville, jazz, Bill Robinson, Fred Astaire, Jack Cole, while more experimental choreography endeavors to be original.  The text is also both original and borrowed such as Martha Graham’s famous letter to Agnes de Mille and Mickey Rooney’s “let’s put on a show” speech from the MGM musical, Babes on Broadway.  STOLEN MOMENTS addresses the influences on the artist, the burden of responsibility and the need to create.

Joanna and Ryan Greer have been self-producing original dance, musical theater and cabaret works since 1999 with the founding of their collective, Kinetic Dance Theater which the NYer has called “Expert razzmatazz” and“Wonderfully expressive choreography.  The Greer’s have a great eye for detail.” –The Dance Insider.   Based in New York for the past nine years, they have premiered in a variety of Off Broadway and Chicago performance spaces.  They have been showcased in festivals including Around the Coyote, the prestigious Dance Chicago, The World Music Festival, Bridge for Dance and Group Theatre Too’s Choreographer’s Canvas, as well as participating in Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Park’s 365 Days / 365 Plays at The Public Theater.  Joanna is also the Associate Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer for the Drama Desk award-winning TADA! Youth Theater, and Ryan makes his living in the Broadway industry as a Senior Account Executive at the advertising agency Art Meets Commerce.  Their purpose as artists is to manifest a creative process for original works that experiment with music, theater and dance, especially to reinvigorate the classic musical theater and jazz dance idioms. 

Howard gives voice to this uncensored and emotional tale through an array of fascinating female characters: Josephine’s domineering mother, Carrie McDonald; fellow chorus girl Lydia Jones;  Ada “Bricktop” Smith , owner of the infamous nightclub “Bricktop’s in Montmarte…” And finally a raw, fearless portrayal of Ms. Baker herself in a series of defining moments: from the hilarious antics which rescued her from the obscurity of the chorus, to the humiliation of being shunned by a narrow-minded American public, to her life-long search for unconditional love… compelled throughout it all by an enduring passion to live life to the fullest.

Founded in 1993, the mission of EMERGING ARTISTS THEATRE is to provide a dynamic home for emerging writers and artists, to develop their work from an idea to a fully realized production.

In the past 16 years, EAT has premiered over 275 new works, garnered a Drama Desk Award nomination for Capathia Jenkins in (Mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story, received the American Theatre Wing Award for Consistent Excellence in Theatre, and was named Best Off Off Broadway Theater Company in NYC for Actors to Work With by Back Stage.

During its 2009- 2010 season, under the Artistic Direction of Paul Adams, EAT will showcase over two-dozen new works.

A celebration of those who perform for the sheer love of it, GENESIUS tells the story of one woman’s passion for love, for theatre, and for the opportunity to be onstage. This new musical touches on the universal themes of reaching out and giving back while pursuing one’s own dreams. In 1971, Jane Simmon Miller co-founded Genesius Theatre in Reading, PA; she dreamed of a theatre group where teen-aged amateurs could participate, learn, and grow while putting on a show. GENESIUS is her story.
 

Through a unique presentation, drawn almost entirely from the Euripides text, this unconventional The Trojan Women shows how the decline of objective, non-participatory press affects our collective awareness of suffering.

Info: 718-398-2494

Set in the present day and featuring an eclectic score ranging from jazz to patter to musical theatre, "Lysistrata The Musical" opens in Athens, Greece, as a group of soldiers leave their wives to go off to fight in a war with Sparta that's been raging for so long that no one can remember what it was about in the first place. Used to this ritual, the women go back to their housewife chores. Except for Lysistrata (Lizzie to her friends), who decides the time has come to end the war once and for all: she convinces every woman in Greece to withhold sex from the men until they stop fighting. Confusion and chaos ensue as the men in power try to thwart the women's schemes, the Spartan women get in on the ‘action' and the balance of power tilts dangerously.

Opera. She is the recipient of the 2002 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award.
The performance schedule for "Lysistrata The Musical" is Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 and Sundays at 3, with a special Opening Night performance on Monday, April 11th at 8. There is an additional 2 PM matinee on Saturday April 23rd and no performances on Sunday, April 17th or Thursday, April 21st.